Background and lessons learned from adoption of agile design and development methodologies in a web project at Washington Post Media. Delivered at George Washington University, Oct. 2008

1. Innovation through Iteration

2. bio.ppt
cocktail: http://flickr.com/photos/feastguru_kirti/2472177819/in/photostream/

3. Background

4. Background

5. Washington Post IT Unit
• About 150 people
• Supports operations of the newspaper and some operations at other
Washington Post Company affiliates, including:
• Publishing
• Advertising
• Circulation
• Syndication
• Accounting
• Production

6. Washington Post Web Solutions

8. Quick commercial
We’re hiring.
Designers, engineers, developers, managers
(See me after.)

9. Traditional methodology flows like a waterfall
http://flickr.com/photos/24028533@N03/2297190795/

10. The Waterfall: Measure twice, cut once
• Requirements Doc
• Known specs
• Wireframes
• Architecture Diagrams
Discovery • Working Build
Design • Test Scripts
Development
• Discrete phases
Testing
• Tight discipline • Launch
Deployment
• Specific and unchanging requirements
• Design and development standards
• Extensive testing
The goal: Build the thing right.

11. Waterfall works well for large-scale projects
• When it's familiar territory
• Better for projects with high levels of integration
with existing systems
• When working prototypes for user feedback are
more expensive/difficult to produce (e.g., non-
web)
• When revision is difficult

12. Waterfall projects
 Familiar territory 
Simple transactions 
Integration with DSI

13. Waterfall projects
 Familiar territory 
Simple transactions 
Integration with PAS

14. Potential effects of waterfall projects
• Simplified project governance (Senior Management)
• Bigger projects mean fewer per year to track
• Project bloat
• Hoarding of IT Resources
• Inaccurate LOE and schedule estimates (IT Management)
• Bigger projects with more parts and objectives are harder to estimate
• Tendency toward quot;Launch and move onquot; mentality
• More risk that changing business needs will outpace development

15. When things go wrong in the waterfall
“We built all this upsell capability,
but after launch we learned it was
completely off-target for the
audience.” – IT
“By the time the site launched it
looked completely different from
what we had envisioned.”
– Designer
“By the time the project finished,
the business needs had totally
changed.” – Business Analyst
“If I knew in the beginning what
I know now, we would have
made a very different site.”
– Business Client

16. New strategy, new methodology
16

17. Business in transition

18. Business in transition

19. Where IT comes in
Align our methodologies to support innovation. . .
• Partner with the business to explore and realize new revenue streams
• Enable new “bets” and “small-scale experiments”
• Improve speed to market; bring value faster
. . . While we remain true to our core mission of supporting the
traditional business

20. Knowledge gap
Decisions Knowledge
volume
time

21. A shift in emphasis
Waterfall:
Build the thing right.
Iterative:
Build the right thing.

22. An alternate approach: Iterative
ß ß ß ß ß
T I M E
• Better fit for product innovation
Discovery
• Speed to market with beta releases
Design
• Betas prove/refine the concept
Development
• Earlier value generation Testing
• More user feedback, which guides the next iterations v1.0
Deployment
The goal: Build the right thing.

23. Beta is the new black

24. Post-1.0 iterations
Subscriber Self Service Commercial Classified Self Service
5 Releases 22 Releases
in 3 months in 9 months

25. Let’s clarify: Iterative vs. incremental
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spielzimmer/429215172/
Got the whole brick wall metaphor from Jeff Patton talking to Jared Spool.
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2008/08/05/spoolcast-ux-in-an-agile-environment-with-jeff-patton/

26. Maintain a complete user experience
http://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/1159076220/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/1159076220/
Got the whole cake metaphor listening to Brandon Schauer talk about The Long Wow.
http://www.uie.com/articles/the_long_wow

27. The Iterative technique
• Smaller teams
• Close collaboration among IT and the business
• Use of non-traditional technologies and services
• Open source software
• Existing services/API’s
• Beta releases
• Rigorous collection and analysis
of customer usage and feedback
• Site metrics
• Customer service
• Community interaction
• Exit strategy
• Customer
• Technical

28. Modular code enables re-use
ß ß ß
Shopping Cart Credit Card Google Maps
Processing Integration
ß ß ß
Social Mobile Text
Networking Browsing Messaging
ß
ß
Rating/
Video Player Reviewing

29. Business-side roles in iterative projects
• Business case preparation
• Product conception and roadmapping
• Site marketing to drive traffic
• Content creation and management
• Partner management
• Advertising and consumer sales
• Financial management
• User community management
• Collecting, organizing, and responding to customer feedback
• Collecting and analyzing metrics

30. Iterative works well. . .
• When the feature set is evolving
• Bets on ideas; small-scale experiments
• Minimal IT investment
• Low-cost failure
• Because it’s in line with the advantages of the web
• Easier to update, enhance, evolve
• Instant customer feedback
• Incremental releases of new functionality (Betas)
• Product improves as more people use it

31. Challenges/Risks with iterative products
• Do you ever get the feeling
that you’re surrounded by
total and complete chaos?
• Organizational inertia, cultural
change
• Integration with enterprise systems
• Transition from Beta to bulletproof
You
• Abandoning unsuccessful Betas

32. Challenges/Risks with iterative products
• Business pressure to deliver results early after release
• Requires more agile-oriented
• Marketing
• Support
• Expectations
• Resource proportioning

34. Pilot project: Vine

35. That’s it.
Questions? Dave Burke
dave@daveburke.com
Contact Get the slides:
www.slideshare.net/daveburke
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